EXCLUSIVE: Jawan, Mission Raniganj, Thank You For Coming: Strong content or Star Power, what works at the Bollywood box office? Trade experts opine

Starting with Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan, 2023 has undeniably been one of the most fruitful years for Bollywood movies at the box office post-pandemic. Talking about the second quarter, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (153.60 cr), OMG 2 (150.17 cr), Gadar 2 (525.45 cr), and above all Jawan (626.37 cr) enjoyed a phenomenal run at the domestic box office. However, on 6th October, Mission Raniganj (12.60 cr*), Thank You For Coming (5.94 Cr*), and Dono clashed at the box office and unfortunately failed to create any kind of magic among the audience.

To analyse the reason behind the poor collections of these biggies, Bollywood Bubble had a conversation with prominent trade experts of the industry.

Trade experts on Mission Raniganj and Thank You For Coming box office

Producer and film business expert, Girish Johar tells us, “Talking about 3 releases which were Mission Raniganj, Dono, and Thank You For Coming, on a comprehensive note the audience were simply not interested. For Mission Raniganj, the film was not even promoted well. The awareness level of the film despite getting good feedback was too low for the audience. Thank You For Coming, the audiences are simply not interested for these kind of films. This kind of a film have a very restrictive appeal and a very limited target audience.”

Citing what went wrong, trade expert Raj Bansal stated, “What happens is when you have some big films which does very well at the box office, the subsequent films which releases gets affected. But in this case, what happened was Akshay Kumar’s films are unfortunately not doing well despite good reviews. Thank you for coming was an adult film and it had very limited audience.”

Content or star power, what is the key to Bollywood box office success?

Mission Raniganj starring Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra is about a true-life-braveheart in a rescue operation. While Thank You For Coming featuring Bhumi Pednekar, Shehnaaz Gill, Kusha Kapila revolved around females tryst with sexual pleasure. Neither Akshay’s popularity nor relevancy of Thank You For coming’s content enticed audience. Sharing his thoughts on content vs star power, Raj Bansal opined, “Content always works, but the opening should be very strong. If you look at Akshay Kumar’s box office revenues, certain films had very good reviews and content, but still didn’t do well. Talking about Oh My God 2, where his role was an extended cameo, it did well despite of a very poor opening and very strong opposition. I was expecting Mission Raniganj to do well because everyone loved the film. But the first weekend was around 11 or 12 crores, which was very disappointing.”

While this week was one of the disappointing ones with such collections, the second half of the year is expected to gain momentum with films like Tiger 3, Animal, Dunki, Salaar, Sam Bahadur, Yodha and Merry Christmas. among others.

Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: Prabhas starrer Salaar or Shah Rukh Khan’s Dunki: Which movie will race ahead at the box office? Trade experts predict